Glenn Tropile and his sobbing wife passed the night in the stubble of a
cornfield. Neither of them slept much.
Tropile, numbed by contact with the iron chill of the field--it would
be months before the new Sun warmed the Earth enough for it to begin
radiating in turn--tossed restlessly, dreaming. He was Wolf. Let it be
so, he told himself again and again. I _will_ be Wolf. I will strike
back at the Citizens. I will--
Always the thought trailed off. He would exactly _What_? What could he
do?
Migration was an answer--go to another city. With Gala, he guessed.
Start a new life, where he was not known as Wolf.
And then what? Try to live a sheep's life, as he had tried all his
years? And there was the question of whether, in fact, he could manage
to find a city where he was not known. The human race was migratory,
in these years of subjection to the never quite understood rule of the
Pyramids.
It was a matter of insulation. When the new Sun was young, it was hot,
and there was plenty of warmth; it was possible to spread north and
south, away from final line of permafrost which, in North America,
came just above the old Mason-Dixon line. When the Sun was dying, the
cold spread down. The race followed the seasons. Soon all of Wheeling
would be spreading north again, and how was he to be sure that none of
Wheeling's Citizens might not turn up wherever he might go?
He could be sure--that was the answer to that.
All right, scratch migration. What remained? He could--with Gala, he
guessed--live a solitary life on the fringes of cultivated land. They
both had some skill at rummaging the old storehouses of the ancients,
and there was still food and other commodities to be found.
But even a Wolf is gregarious by nature and there were bleak hours in
that night when Tropile found himself close to sobbing with his wife.
At the first break of dawn, he was up. Gala had fallen into a light and
restless sleep; he called her awake.
"We have to move," he said harshly. "Maybe they'll get up enough guts
to follow us. I don't want them to find us."
Silently she got up. They rolled and tied the blankets she had bought;
they ate quickly from the food she had brought; they made packs and put
them on their shoulders and started to walk. One thing in their favor:
they were moving fast, faster than any Citizen was likely to follow.
All the same, Tropile kept looking nervously behind him.
They hurried north and east, and that was a mistake, because by noon
they found themselves blocked by water. Once it had been a river; the
melting of the polar ice caps that had submerged the coasts of the old
continents had drowned it out and now it was salt water. But whatever
it was, it was impassable. They would have to skirt it westward until
they found a bridge or a boat.
"We can stop and eat," Tropile said grudgingly, trying not to despair.
They slumped to the ground. It was warmer now. Tropile found himself
getting drowsier, drowsier--
He jerked erect and stared around belligerently. Beside him, his wife
was lying motionless, though her eyes were open, gazing at the sky.
Tropile sighed and stretched out. A moment's rest, he promised himself,
and then a quick bite to eat, and then onward....
He was sound asleep when they spotted him.
* * * * *
There was a flutter of iron bird's wings from overhead. Tropile
jumped up out of his sleep, awakening to panic. It was outside the
possibility of belief, but there it was:
In the sky over him, etched black against a cloud, a helicopter. And
men staring out of it, staring down at him.
A helicopter!
But there were no helicopters, or none that flew--if there had been
fuel to fly them with--if any man had had the skill to make them fly.
It was impossible! And yet there it was, and the men were looking at
him, and the impossible great whirling thing was coming down, nearer.
He began to run in the downward wash of air from the vanes. But it was
no use. There were three men and they were fresh and he wasn't. He
stopped, dropping into the fighter's crouch that is pre-set into the
human body, ready to do battle.
The men didn't want to fight. They laughed and one of them said
amiably: "_Long_ past your bedtime, boy. Get in. We'll take you home."